A Cross-Sectional Association Between Screen-Based Sedentary Behavior and Anxiety in Academic College Students: Mediating Role of Negative Emotions and Moderating Role of Emotion Regulation

Abstract

Purpose

The study aims to explore the relationship and potential mechanisms between screen time and anxiety and have a clear understanding of the role of negative emotions and emotion regulation, thus providing guidance for Chinese college students to improve mental health.

Methods

We conducted a questionnaire survey by selecting 1721 academic college students from 6 colleges and universities in 5 provinces in China, and the data were analyzed through the Process program of SPSS for mediating effect and moderating effect.

Results

There is a significant positive relationship between screen time and anxiety, negative emotions play a mediating role between the two (indirect effect = 0.32, p < 0.001), mediating effect accounts for 59.88% of the total effect, and emotion regulation regulates the direct relationship between screen time and anxiety (interaction effect = 0.027, p < 0.001).

Conclusion

This study sheds light on the potential mechanisms by which screen time affects anxiety in academic college students, providing a fresh perspective on anxiety reduction. Screen time positively affects anxiety levels, where negative emotions have a mediating role and emotion regulation has a moderating role. In the future, we can control screen ++time, increase physical activities, reduce negative emotions, and improve the emotional regulation ability to relieve anxiety, so as to improve the mental health of academic college students, and expect to have a positive impact on future learning, life, and planning.

Keywords:

• college students
• sedentary behavior
• anxiety
• negative emotions
• emotion regulation

Ethical Approval and Written Consent

This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Shanghai University of Sports(102772022RT096) and the procedures performed were in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Parents of all participants signed an informed consent form describing the purpose, method, process, and publication plan of the study.

Acknowledgment

We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to all voluntary participants of this study.

Disclosure

The authors declare no conflicts of interest in this work.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the National Social Science Fund of China under the 2019 General Project of Education for the 13th Five-Year Plan, Research on Theoretical Analysis, Model Construction and Test Optimization of Evaluation of Primary and Secondary School Physical Education Teachers (BLA190216).